32 nam, had been CNN's adviser during the Gulf War coverage, and he enjoyed Johnson's trust. Pamela Hill, a respected documentary filmmaker who had been producing the precursor to "NewsStand," a show called "Impact," was wary of working too closely with Smith, because she belIeved that he was too close to the Pentagon, and she worried that he might leak the script before it was broadcast. (Hill declined to discuss the program.) Johnson telephoned CNN's lawyer, Da- vid KoWer, and asked him to let Hill know that General Smith's involvement was an instruction, not a request. Two days later, Johnson, who was in touch with Smith, learned that the General had growing concerns about the story, and he did not believe that the producers had given Smith full access to their work. Johnson then spoke with some of the producers and with Rick Kaplan, who says he had heard about the story only a few days earlier. This time, Kaplan supported the producers. Kaplan and Johnson got into a heated discussion, with Kaplan saying that Smith had a vested interest in the story, and that he would "rather ask Roger Ailes for help" than work further with Smith. Later that day, Johnson told Kaplan that he thought higWy of Smith, citing his pa- triotism and good intentions, and said that he felt Smith was being ignored. According to one person, Kaplan's re- sponse to his boss included the words "This is bullshit." (Kaplan emphatically denies this particular Kaplan story.) It was natural that Kaplan would side with the "NewsStand" team. Hill is a former ABC producer whose "Impact" series was the only representative of long-form, analytical news in the pre- Kaplan CNN. Tension already existed between the "Impact" unIt and the regu- lar news bureaus, and when Kaplan joined the organization the "Impact" unit was the first and most enthusiastic en- listee in the Kaplan army. "Kaplan gets it," says one member of that unit, "and so many of us here felt that people didn't get us, or what we could do." Johnson felt that the choice Kaplan was putting to him-trust Perry Smith or trust your own journalists-was no choice at all, and he went with his team. P ETER ARNETT'S defense after the broadcast was that he had scarcely participated in the report, contributing "not one commà' to either the script he read on air or the magazine story in Time that carried his byline as co-author. Arnett's role in the broadcast rankles Johnson. "] never knew any reporter, in print or in television, who would come in and simply read a script or let a text be submitted for publication without changing a comma," he said. "That's not the way we work. Most of my corre- spondents felt that I should have fired Peter. Still do. Still do. He was spared only because of his entire record with us, and the fact that he was willing to volun- teer to stay back in Baghdad." After the Abrams report was re- leased, Johnson booked a ballroom at the Omni Hotel, at the CNN Center, and, characteristically, invited all his journalists to three town-hall meetings that he would conduct personally, in an open conference call that included all the CNN bureaus. The meetings were packed to overflowing, and the CNN staff unloaded a collective anger that was quite startling in its ferocity. THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 3, 1998 "Management was pounded," Johnson recalls of those meetings. "Pounded." It was obvious that the tainted broad- cast had touched some deep institutional nerve, bringing to the surface issues that went beyond the Tailwind question. And it was plain that much of the anger was directed at Kaplan. Some attending the town-hall meetings demanded to know why the big-shot executive from ABC hadn't safeguarded their network against this embarrassment. Others asked why he hadn't resigned. Johnson defended Kaplan's decision not to resign, eXplaining, according to one participant, that he himself had spent more than two years searching for the person to bring CNN "to the next level," and had found Kaplan to be that man. Still, Johnson now knew, if he hadn't before, that he had a Rick Kaplan problem. "It is very tough, and I am attempting to deal with that right now," Johnson told me last week. "There are those within CNN-partic- ularly those brought to CNN by Rick- who have got incredible loyalty, and want to work with him. It's amazing, the loyalty that he's built with many people. But what that has done is create the perception of two teams: the Kaplan team and the others. And it is a big problem for me right now." Two weeks ago, Johnson flew to New York and met with the Time Warner board of directors, before whom, for the second time, he offered his resignation. The board did not accept it, but one board member said, "This has damaged U.S. foreign policy around the world, because some people will always now believe that poison gas was used. It will strengthen Saddam and his people, who'll say, 'What a bunch of American hypocrites-they used gas, too.' " Johnson described to the board the steps he planned to take, including the creation of a new position-execu- tive vice-president of news standards and practices-to guard against another Tailwind. "Right now, I'm in the process of trying to get CNN back on track," he said. "Morale is very low. Anger is high. Trust is shattered." R ICK KAPLAN acknowledges that people think CNN has been in- vaded by "the ABC Mafia," as he puts It-he recalls that Johnson himself re- cently said to him, "Geez, aren't there "Go ahead, finish your beer. "